Bees are our friends.

That’s the message Vicksburg’s landscape architect wants to convey after swarms were spotted downtown and at a Riverside Place home on Thursday.

&#8220A swarm this time of year is unusual,” said Jeff Richardson, noting that the city normally receives reports of two to three swarms a year usually before midsummer.

The Warren County Extension Service office and the E-911 Dispatch Center are two places that keep lists of beekeepers who will remove swarms.

A swarm was reported in a tree in the 1300 block of Washington Street Thursday afternoon, but the honey bees had moved on by the time someone arrived to remove them.

A second swarm was reported at the home of Paul and Donna Ingram, about five miles south of the downtown area. It was removed by Sid Ervin, a retired contractor who keeps hives.

Richardson said there may be more swarms, and there’s usually no cause for alarm.

The insects can sting, but are not aggressive and usually don’t attack unless they are defending their food and young in a hive or have been provoked. Because the swarmers don’t have a hive, they have even less reason to sting.

&#8220I hope they don’t kill them because they do pollinate plants,” Richardson said.

Normal behavior is for some bees to leave a colony or hive when it becomes overcrowded and congested and there is more than one queen bee present.

Normally, there is only one queen per hive, but a mild winter can spur the development of one or more additional queens. When this happens, one of the queens will leave, accompanied by workers and drones or male bees, looking for another suitable place to establish a hive. Such a place is normally a cavity in a tree, the walls of a building or even a man made hive built especially for bees.

When bees alight on a tree or a bush, they are normally resting before continuing their search for a new home.

If a keeper can’t be found, all the bees need is time, Richardson said.

&#8220We normally barricade off the area and they are generally gone by the next day,” he said.

A honey bee swarm can contain from 1,500 to 30,000 bees, depending on the size of the original hive.

&#8220Swarms around here usually have a couple of thousand bees,” Richardson said.